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[245] and lemon and almond trees, is worthy of the neighborhood of Lisbon; while, as you look perpendicularly down, your head grows giddy at the awful height. Or, as you look up from the bottom, and see the majestic arch over you, at such an elevation that its thickness is sensibly diminished to the sight, though it still echoes and re-echoes every sound you utter, you feel that indistinct impression of inferiority and subjection that you do when you stand before one of the great works of nature. . . . .

I cannot, of course, speak with minuteness or assurance of Lisbon. I was there only from October 23 to November 21, and my time was so incessantly occupied that, excepting in the evening, I went out only by accident, unless it were to one of the public libraries. . . . .

But, though I should pass over everything else, I must not pass over Cintra. To this beautiful spot I went with my friend Sir John Campbell, and we passed there three days, at the festival of San Martinho, when all the country was rejoicing in the balmy freshness of a second spring, and all the fields and valleys were filled with flowers, as they are with us in the month of May. This singular phenomenon I have been witnessing ever since the rains fell in the end of September; for since then, the earth has been putting on its gayest hues again, so that now, when the second spring, as it is here called, may be considered in its perfection, everything, even to the lilies and roses and lilacs, is in blossom. Cintra, therefore, was exquisitely beautiful. It is the height first descried on approaching this coast, and is called by the sailors the Rock of Lisbon. You approach it from the city by a road that offers occasionally a few fine prospects; but you are obliged to turn the angle of the mountain and come round full upon the side that faces the northwest before you can see it.

Cintra, therefore, is a village and a collection of country-seats scattered on the declivity and in the dells of a precipitous mountain, whose sides are covered about two thirds of the way to the summit with the beautiful verdure of rich and various woods, and broken by innumerable little cascades that come rushing down over its rocks; while from its base extends a luxuriant plain, full of culture and population, which, at the distance of between four and five miles, is terminated by the ocean, whose magnificence finally closes up the whole prospect. The road passes, I should think, about half-way between the summit and the base, and beginning from the southeastern point, where you first enter, extends round to beyond the village of Colares,—a distance of four or five miles,—cut like a kind of cornice in the side of the mountain, whose windings and indentations


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